George Orwell Would Be Proud
by Julia451
Summary: One-shot set post-series. Katniss still worries about whether or not things have really changed or if the new regime of Panem will just repeat their predecessors' mistakes. President Paylor assures her that this revolution will turn out differently; she knows it will because Katniss herself ensured it. How?


I didn't expect President Paylor herself to show up for the opening of District 12's library.

"Is this Plutarch's idea?" I ask her once I've managed to fight my way through the crowd for my turn to shake her hand.

"Plutarch led the effort to try to talk me out of it," she tells me. "Apparently, my absence at someone's birthday banquet currently going on in District 1 will cause the end of the world."

"And you chose to come here instead?"

"Why do you think I insisted I needed to be here instead?" she asks me with a wink. Her grin disappears as soon as another camera flash goes off in our faces. I shudder as I imagine how many cameras are at work in District 1 right now.

I lose sight of Paylor for a while after we go into the library and I start scanning the shelves of books. Outside of school and our family book, I've hardly ever even held a book in my life. I certainly never had the time to sit down and read one as long as some of these. District 12 has never had a library that I or anyone I've ever known can remember, but even if we had, I know none of these titles would have been there. Most of them are newly printed but written long ago; they're supposed to be the stories about defiance, heroism, honor, and courage that the Capitol banned and burned long before the days of even the first rebellion. No one, not even the most privileged elites in the Capitol, have seen the books here. I wonder how they were ever preserved (the new publishers must have gotten them from somewhere) and why. I guess, at some point, if you went up high enough, some of the old leaders did read them. If the books could have given people in the districts dangerous ideas, they must have also shown the Capitol what to watch out for.

As I look at all the books around me and all the corridors leading to other rooms just as full, as I begin to realize the immense size of the words the Capitol worked so hard to hide from us, the whole thing becomes stranger to me. Words themselves never struck me as very dangerous. Almost everything is recorded electronically now; if you want to share a message, you don't write it down – you record and broadcast a video. Could words without a voice, without a face to go along with them, really be so strong that even the Capitol feared them? What's in all of them anyway?

I pass books that definitely look thick enough to be a formidable weapon if you threw them at someone's head with titles I can't make much sense of: _Holy Bible. Lord of the Rings. Les Miserables. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Atlas Shrugged._ I wonder if all books used to be this long when I come across a thin one called _Animal Farm_. I pick it up but only look at the cover without opening it.

"One of my favorites."

I turn around to find President Paylor walking towards me, her bodyguards circling the area at various points short distances away. "You've seen it before?" I ask, intrigued.

She nods. "The libraries in Districts 3, 5, and 8 opened last year. This is one of the Staples they're all going to have."

That sounds like an almost unbelievably fast pace to me. "This project really means a lot to them, doesn't it?"

"It means a lot to all of us. All that stuff about the importance of history, the freedom of the press, and how knowledge is power isn't just for publicity. The Districts having books for the first time in decades is a crucial, major step forward in rebuilding our civilization."

"I know," I say, and I mean it. I do know that knowledge is power and that hiding knowledge and silencing our voices were essential to the Capitol for keeping us all in line. It feels empowering to have all these forbidden books around me, to be free to read whatever I want whenever I want. I'm glad the library is here – it should be a sign that things are really changing, that our world is completely different from the one I grew up in, right?

"Are you all right, Miss Everdeen?" I hear Paylor ask.

I vigorously shake my head, both to clear it and to shake off whatever she saw in my face, before I turn to her and lie, "I'm fine. Just thinking of... how much things have changed."

To my surprise, Paylor responds, "We still have a long way to go, but this will help get us there."

Something about her sincere tone makes me whisper aloud, "And then what?"

She starts to answer, "Well, next on the agenda is..."

I should just let her continue with that idea, but now that it's on my mind, my fear for the future is so strong – my fear that someday, someone like Coin will rise up and seize power again and establish something as horrific as the Hunger Games in the name of the greater good, of supposedly preventing the horrors of the past – that I blurt out, "I mean, what will happen when it's all done? When we get 'there'?" How long will it last? How long until the cycle begins again? Until the next President Coin takes over in the name of defending the people but really enslaving them? Who claims to fight for freedom and justice but really just wants power for herself? Until the rebels rally behind someone who's no different from the tyrants they're fighting against?

"Are you hoping for anything in particular?" Paylor asks me.

"Just that we don't go back," I reply. I've already discussed this with Plutarch, after all – maybe now I can find out if he meant it when he said they would try to be careful not to let history repeat itself.

"We won't. You can be sure of that," Paylor says firmly, with her eyes narrowed.

I do trust Paylor to always do the right thing, to be a good leader, but even she doesn't have unlimited power, and she won't be around forever. "How can you guarantee that?"

"I can't. You did."

I raise my left eyebrow. What is she getting at? "What do you mean?"

She looks uneasy, and I realize the answer might relate to something we can never discuss – not in public, not in private, nowhere. But she recovers quickly and steps up to the shelf where I grabbed _Animal Farm_, not looking at me as she browses the books. Thinking that's the end of it, I'm about to leave when she says, "It's an unfortunate fact that history often repeats itself. Have you heard Plutarch's views on the subject?"

"Yes," I reply tonelessly.

Paylor keeps her eyes and hands on the shelves as if she's searching intently for something. "But this time, we know for a fact that it won't. We know that the cycle has been broken, that we're not following the usual pattern."

"Why?"

"Someone stopped it. Someone did the one thing necessary to make sure this doesn't end the same, disastrous way it always has before."

"How?"

"They followed the instructions a wise man gave over a century ago about how to succeed at revolting. How to protect yourself from falling into the trap rebellions always fall into."

"What instructions?" I ask, now positive she can't be referring to me and, thus, wondering what this has to do with me supposedly ensuring things are changed for good.

Paylor's eyes glimmer with recognition as she removes a book from the shelf – I guess the search wasn't just a cover for our conversation. "These instructions," she says, as she flips through pages and then turns to the very back before turning back to the middle again. She hands me the book and taps her finger on a spot near the middle of the page on the left. "This is how I know that things have definitely changed this time. That we've avoided the mistake our predecessors always made. Someone took the necessary precautions for us."

She leaves without another word. Confused, I look down at the part of the page where she pointed and read:

"That kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters. ... Revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job."

The book shakes in my hands as I see the power-hungry Alma Coin announcing to District 13 the terms of my becoming the mockingjay. Informing the rebels of my supposed death and encouraging them to keep fighting in my memory. Suggesting that we hold the very games we fought to end, proving to me that nothing had changed except our masters. Falling off the platform with my arrow in her chest. If chucking out the leader of a violent, conspiratorial revolution ensures a radical improvement, I guess I've done that.

I turn to look for Paylor, but she and her entourage have moved on. Neither of us will ever be able to mention this anyway. I silently thank her as I turn to the inside back cover of the book where I know the writer's name and picture will be. I recognize the name instantly, close Paylor's book, and go back to where I left _Animal Farm_. Just how much of an expert was this guy on revolutions?

I walk fast. I want to find Peeta and show him the first forbidden book I'll be reading.


End file.
